


The Death Trials

by MGWinchester



Category: Original Work
Genre: Army, Business, Death, F/M, Mean, Rude - Freeform, Sex, Sex Toys, Trials, dead, original - Freeform, sarcastic, smart ass - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9314222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MGWinchester/pseuds/MGWinchester
Summary: Jason Bradley never cared for thinking about what was after death. Life was already too complicated as it was there no point thinking about something that will come when he is in his nineties, old and grey and dying of lung cancer in a hospital. For now, the twenty-eight year old lived his life trying to prove his parents wrong meanwhile sleeping with as many girls as possible before he had to settle down and commit his life to his girlfriend. Death was the last thing on his mind. It's funny how somethings can come so suddenly, Jason's life started and ended for what seemed like a split second. After coming home from work the man fell a victim to a dramatic car crash and his body now floats forever in the rocky river that runs through town. That's it...right? Turns out there is more to death then complete blackness. Jason and a group of people in a similar situation are forced to participate in the Death Trials, a competition to see who goes to hell or who goes to heaven. The competition judges as person for who they really are, which isn't a good thing for Jason who is now riding the highway to hell. He must try to figure out how to get to heaven or else he'll rot in hell like the scum he really is.





	

_ ‘Limbo: The unbaptised and virtuous pagans including: Virgil, Homer,  _

_ Horace, Ovid, Socrates, Plato, and Saladin.’ _

_ -Dante’s Inferno  _

 

They say just before you die, right before you walk into the blinding white light ahead of you, you watch your whole life pass before your eyes. It seems like forever but it only takes a couple seconds and there you’re able to see if you really lived your life to the fullest. For most people the answer is yes. Everyone has their faults, hardships and mistakes but generally people can look back on their life and think ‘yes, I had a good life’. 

The ideal death would be if everyone lived until the ripe age of a hundred and died in their sleep due to old age. Family would surround them at their funeral. Children and grandchildren would cry over the black casket that showed the pale corpse coated with makeup to attempt to make them look like they just fell into a peaceful sleep. With  _ What a Wonderful World  _ playing in the background they would heist up the casket and carefully slide the corpse into a beautiful black vehicle. One by one everyone would make it to the cemetery and watch, for the last time, the person they loved be lowered into the ground to enjoy their eternal rest. 

Jason didn’t see that. Everything was in slow motion mimicking a scene in a movie. It all came so fast, so suddenly that the black haired man sitting in the beautiful red mustang didn’t know what was going on until the car began to fall. 

 

On a cold, and particularly rainy, night in August a single luxury car began to drive over an old covered bridge which had been holding ground since the nineteenth century. Mice and birds made nests in the roof. Once upon a time people attempted to clear out those nests and scare the birds away. The fight was useless as, in the end, the animals won. Once painted a bright white colour that welcomed people into the city the paint now peeled from the wood and turned a hideous junk yard grey colour. Planks of wood were missing from the sides, holes filled the creaking roof and one step onto the covered bridge and you would be scared that you would fall to your death. However Jason had been on this bridge millions of times in his life. Not once has there been an accident that he knew of. 

Despite the structural flaws, the bridge was stable and sturdy which was the only reason the town hadn’t begun to fix it up...well that and the dumb myth about a woman in white haunting the bridge. Although it’s only a wives tale. There has only ever been one case of someone falling into the rough rapids and sharp rocks below. Obviously they died. The drop is drastic, if the bottom was filled with pillows and cotton candy the victim would have still died. Below the bridge was a fury of waves and rushing water that powered down the old stream all year round and never ceased to decelerate. The rocks could have been mistaken as long knives sticking out of the water ready to impale anyone who fell down. 

Why think about something as unimportant as death meanwhile the real world is the true hell the mustang driving man had to deal with at the moment. Driving home was now automatic to him. He stopped and slowed down without even noticing meanwhile his mind was thinking about work and the radio blasted to the sound of AC/DC which was able to block out any sounds around him which was mainly the rain and the sound of rushing water below him. Not many cars used this path to get into town ever since the opening of the new entrance off of the highway put in last spring. The new entrance into town cut Jason’s driving time in half but it was a matter between whether he cared to be on the road with idiot drivers or not. In the end, the longer drive home yet the sweet relief of not having to put up with novice drivers won out over the short cut. 

Suddenly, the car lunged forward. With a huge dent left in the back of the mustang the car crashed through the wooden wall separating him from the watery grave below. The car teetered back and forth like a scale between the bridge and the river. The airbag exploded in his face, the horn echoed through the forest. Jason only just began to understand what was happening when the car was yet again pushed forward by the truck. The red car plunged towards the deathly rapids below with the commercial truck that had a large dent in the front falling behind him. 

_ ‘Is this really how i’m going to die?!’  _ he thought to himself meanwhile screaming for help as if there were anyone who could possibly help him at this time.  _ ‘Oh fuck! Shit, shit, shit! I don’t deserve this fucking death!’  _ With a loud  _ CRASH _ the car collided with one of the razor sharp rocks and remains of the car and the broken and bloody body were swept away with the current. 

 

                   _________________________________________

 

“Hey, buddy...wake up.” The voice was muffled but distinctly male. Jason could barely make out what the man was saying. Everything hurt... _ everything _ . His head pounded to the beat of his heart THU-THUMP THU-THUMP THU-THUMP over and over again. Each pulsating rhythm sent a flurry of daggers through his head and down his body. Jason tried to sit up but only resulted in a sharp cry of pain along with what felt like thousands of tiny needles shoot up his back and down each muscle of his body. Was it possible he survived the crash? No, that was impossible. Jason was a goner without a doubt yet that didn’t explain how he was alive now. Jason tried to open his eyes but his eyelids felt like they were coated in cement. “Come on, wake up now. Nappy time is over, you got to do real shit now.” The voice was easier to hear now. It was British, the first thing that Jason noticed. Deep and husky in a both calming yet cocky attitude. Jason didn’t know any British people, so who was this man? It took a lot of effort trying to open his eyes just a little bit. Moving seemed impossible. What did finally get Jason out of the vegetable state was a hard slap across the face. Jason sprang up, eyes wide open and turned to the man who crouched beside him. 

   “What the hell, dude!” His eyes met with a pair of soulless blue eyes. They looked dead. His eyes moved and blinked but it was like whatever was behind them died a long time ago. The man crouched beside Jason who sat in grass and dirt. The man had sandy blond hair and strong facial features. His jaw bone and cheekbones were distinct and sharp, almost as sharp as Jason’s however no one could match the statue carved look Jason boasted about all the time. Despite wearing a cocky smile, showing off his pearly whites and dimples, there was something about this man that just didn’t seem right. It felt as though he were stepping on glass, always watching his move. If he made one bad move this whole scenario may end up bad. Even worse than it is now.  

   “Eh, you’re up. You’ve been snoozing for a while.” Said the man with a smart ass  laugh. First thirty seconds of knowing the guy and Jason could vote that he already didn’t like him. Aside from the menacing vibe he gave off he was just all in all cocky and looked like one of those guys who got everything. Jason should know, he  _ is  _ one of those guys. 

   “H...how am I alive?” Jason stammered “Did you abduct me? I swear to God I am I very rich man and I will sue your ass off if…”

   “Oh calm it.” Cocky scoffed “You really think you’re lucky enough to survive a fall like that? You fell off a bridge into rapids and fucking Titanic iceberg rocks.” Jason titled his head, confused. He wasn’t the only one who seemed confused about waking up here. Jason sat on a forest floor. A forest he didn’t recognise. Aside from the cocky man beside him Jason wasn’t alone either. There had to be about fifty people who were beginning to wake up with people beside them like the cocky man was to Jason. 

   “I’m dead…” he stuttered “Dead? That’s impossible! I’m sitting here talking to you! My heart is beating and I feel pain and this is not what I expect heaven to look like. It’s a fucking forest! Where am I and who the fuck are you?”

   “Don’t want to be making that tone with a demon now, Jason.” 

   “Demon?” Jason scoffed. The man was clearly insane which wasn’t anymore calming to Jason because there could be nothing worse than being stuck in the middle of a forest with an insane guy who clearly kidnapped you. Maybe he drugged him into thinking he died? Maybe this is all just a dream and soon Jason would wake up in his warm bed beside his girlfriend. “You’re crazy...how do you know my name?”

   “Laugh all you want but i’m the one who chooses whether or not you opt to go to hell or heaven. I wouldn’t make enemies with a demon Jasy.” Jason could have punched them right then and there with that damn nickname. “I know everyone’s names, Jason I especially know yours. I’m Sebastian. You’re demon trials leader. You’ll have another leader in these trials. A bitchy angel you’ll meet a little later.”

   “Trials?”

   “We’ll explain it all to you later. You just woke up after your death so you’re going through a realisation period where…” Sebastian was cut off by a high pitch horror movie shrek from a woman not too far from Jason and Sebastian. Heads swung in her direction. The woman was in her mid forties with long blonde hair and wearing a pink nightgown. She was screaming out in agony, a complete crying and heaving mess. The woman beside her look empathetic and kind. Not like Sebastian who, even on better days, Jason could not picture him being empathetic. Surely she couldn’t be a demon. A couple other people in the enclosure acted like the woman. They were panicking, hyperventilating, or crying. Some people took it out in anger as they screamed and yelled until they couldn’t anymore. Others were left in a state of shock. Eyes were wide open, their jaws dropped to the ground while they pulled their knees as close as they could to their chest and began to rock back and forth. Then there were the people who didn’t really show any emotion. Hints of sadness but mainly relief in their eyes. Probably the people who chose to be here. 

   “Everyone’s dead here…” Jason huffed under his breath. So this was death, huh? Quite anticlimactic. Jason never was one to believe in God. He wasn’t an atheist he just couldn’t find a religion he could truly believe in. He saw all of the religions as just a theory to what could be after death. Nothing is for sure. Yes there could be a God but really, who knows if the only people to have seen him was a man who lived millions of years ago? Jason liked to think that there was something after death, something better than living on earth. He just didn’t know what. One thing’s for sure if that he definitely did not expect this. “Where am I?”

   “The purg.” Sebastian said in a sing song voice. When it was clear Jason just wasn’t understanding Sebastian huffed “Purgatory. Although the name is SO last century so i’d thought I spruce it up with a new name. It’ll catch on eventually.” Sebastian paused for a minute after the joke, at least Jason assumed it was a joke. It was hard to tell whether or not Sebastian was joking or if he was really serious. “Where do you go after death, Jason? What did you believe in?”

   “Nothing.” Jason shrugged 

   “I wonder why I don’t believe that. Come on Jasy, you can tell me anything! Share your secrets and after we can braid each other’s hair and tell ghost stories. I have a few that’ll scare the shit out of you.”

   “I don’t know what I believed. I believed there had to be something after death. It couldn’t just be blackness...but this. Well hell I never thought...this is just all...insane! It has to be some dream! I’m going to wake up and i’ll be in the hospital. I’ll be alright and I will go home and watch TV for the rest of the night.”

   “Lying to yourself is going to help fix this, you think?” 

   “Shut UP!” Jason almost yelled. 

   “Listen, let’s just make this easier on both you and me. You don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here. It’s a mutual agreement we have right there. Just get this through your head. Admit it. You’ve kicked the bucket and now you’re in purgatory with a dashingly handsome demon. You’re waiting to see where you’ll spend the rest of eternity. I’ll be honest with you, Jason. I like you, you remind me of me. That’s not a good thing. At this rate if you don’t change you’ll be chilling in the ice river with Lucifer. I’ve been there, hell is not a fun place. Consider this your last chance to smarten up. It’s a second chance, take it and make good use of it.” 

   “Why do I need to change? I’m not that bad of a guy…” Sebastian let out a loud laugh, almost as loud as the woman’s scream from before. 

   “Right, and i’m Freddy Mercury.” Sebastian shook his head “Come on, kid. Follow me.”

   “No.” Jason resisted. Sebastian only sighed giving the man a sad look as if wondering how pathetic Jason could possibly get. 

   “I’m not going to make you come with me. You can stay here for the rest of forever if you really want. Although I should warn you about the downside to it. Those who stay in purgatory go insane. Past this little enclosing here are ghosts who decided to stay in purgatory. They are sad, violent, and pure mad souls. Sort of like the Mad Hatter on steroids. No one wants to be like that, but hey if you think that’s up your alley then by all means be my guest. I’ll be heading over to meet the others.” Sebastian stood up, Jason could now see how tall Sebastian really was. Jason was a tall man but Sebastian was about a chin taller than the black haired, brown eyed male who now sat upright on the dirty forest floor. Sebastian took a couple strides away from Jason and closer into the deep dark forest. He hated being wrong. Admitting he was wrong was something Jason would never do. Although in this instance Jason saw no other way out. Reluctantly Jason got up and began to follow the cocky demon into the middle of nowhere. 

It hadn’t taken too long to wander through the stretch of forest into another enclosement. The forest was  _ not  _ a normal forest. Sure the trees were green and they were probably a mixture between oak and pine. There were bugs crawling around on the grounds but there were no animals. Not a single bird that cawed or chirped. In the sky there were no stars, no moon, no sun, no clouds. Just a empty blackness that probably would never go away. How the hell Sebastian knew where he was going in almost complete blackness astonished Jason for he was lost. 

In the end they got there. It was an identical enclosement as the one that he had woken up in a while ago. It was a wide open circle without a single tree or rock in the clear cut circle. The only difference this time was that there weren’t fifty different people all crying or panicking around Jason. Only four. Standing in the middle of the enclosure were two men and two women...depending on what age you would consider a woman to be. The one woman there was around Jason’s age and the first person Jason noticed. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she was the angel in their trials. The goddess stood at 5’5” with long chocolate brown hair that glossed over like it was coated in wax yet flowed beautifully over her shoulders and down her back. The girl had bright green eyes and very pale skin that went perfectly with his overall look. Skinny, big breasted, decent ass...if it were any other day he would have definitely hit on her although from the wide, bloodshot eyes and constant movement he could tell she wasn’t in the mood. 

The girl beside her was the one which you would contemplate being either a girl or a woman. She was a mere teenager. Jason thought the angel woman was pale but she was tanned compared to the teenager standing beside her. The very light, pencil straight blonde hair reached to the middle of her back. She had small lips and a decent sized green eyes. When Jason pictured a teenager he expected them to be covered in acne with big huge braces and large glasses with Justin Beiber posters along their walls. Not this girl. The blonde had completely clear white skin, perfect teeth and no glasses. However she had a youthful glow, you could see the difference between woman and girl. The one thing Jason noticed most about her was her expression. Unlike the angel woman she wasn’t crying or shaking. The teenager wasn’t even shocked. She seemed completely fine. Just like some of the people where Jason woke up. She was probably one of the people who chose to be here.

Next was a tall, thick builded man with dark skin, black short hair and big brown eyes and lips. He was strong and Jason could picture him being a fighter or maybe even a father since he gave off that protective vibe. Jason wasn’t, by any means, gay but he certainly felt protected around the taller man. His reaction to this event confirmed Jason’s first impression on the man. He was clearly worried, sad and scared but he was trying to hold it up probably to be the man of the group and because he knew that if he held it together, everyone else would feel even a little bit better.

Finally was the man who stood in front of them. Jason bet his money that the man there was the angel of their trial. He was the type of man who was more of the brains behind the scene rather than the muscle like Sebastian or the fighter man. He was skinnier yet tall, pale skin and a nice stubble along with messy brown hair. 

   “Finally finished, Sebastian? You do like to make a performance out of this don’t you?” The thick Scottish accent he had almost made it impossible to understand what he was saying.

   “Oh shut it, Michael. We got a tough nut over here.” Sebastian gave him a small push forward to stand beside the soldier guy in the middle of the enclosure. The demon then stood beside Michael, hands in his pockets and looking at the group of four. 

   “Hey...you know what the hell is going on?” Asked the man beside Jason in a whisper of a voice meanwhile the demon and angel conversed. 

   “Uh...no I just sort of woke up here.” Jason said 

   “Well from what I gather we’re all dead.”

   “Well no shit there. I already pieced that together.”

   “Hey, I get it. We’re all really freaked out about this but it’s not going to help getting mad at everyone about it. The way you’re dealing with this is only gonna make things a lot worse.” Jason hated admitting that he was right. Instead of saying anything Jason looked to the ground and didn’t acknowledge the man beside him. “Anyways, the name’s Raphael. From what I get this is purgatory and...well actually that’s pretty much all I got.”

   “Jason.” he muttered

   “Alright numbnuts!” Sebastia called “Listen up!”

   “You’re all worried and scared about what’s happening to you. You don’t know what’s going to happen next. Well what happens next depends on you. I’m Michael, the angel of your trials. And this is my associate, Sebastian. Your demon.”

    “You’re all dead, get that out of the way first of all.” Sebastian brought up “And no one here gives a shit if you’re sad about it so stop crying and man up. You are going to be put through six trials which take both emotional and physical strength. These are called the Death Trials. You’ll be facing real shit going into these trials. They won’t be easy.”

   “These trials will determine whether you go to heaven…” Michael looked at the two girls and Raphael. 

   “Or hell.” Sebastian stared directly at Jason. “Questions?”

   “Why are we in this group?” Quickly asked the hot girl.

   “Consider this your support group.” Sebastian answered with an amused smile. “There’ll be some trials you’ll have to work together to complete.”

   “What sort of things will be in these trials?” Raphael questioned

   “What? You want spoilers? Nope. Can’t do that.” Sebastian shook his head teasingly, crossing his arms over his chest. Jason gave a small smile before he spoke. 

   “When’s lunch?” Jason seemed pleased enough with his line but nobody else laughed

   “You know what?” Sebastian pointed at Jason. No frown or sense that he was upset at him. “You and I are going to be great friends.” Sebastian replied “Alright, first trial’s on. Don’t fuck it up.”


End file.
